Owly055
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- Feb 28, 2014
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I've made a sort of creme cheese.......... soft and spreadable twice now, staring out as if making chevre, using kefir for a culture. Tangy delicious stuff I use on a lot of things.
Yesterday I decided to experiment. I love the creamy character Flora Danica gives to cheeses, as well as the peppery flavors that Propionic Shermani produces. I innoculated a gallon of cold pasteurized whole milk with a sprinkle each of these two cultures, some calcium chloride, and a normal amount of rennet, covered it and let it sit on a seedling mat, as it was cold yesterday. This was an ordinary seedling mat, not my high powered heating mat. I allowed it to sit for 20 hours, during which time I did cut the curd after about 4 hours. I then poured the works into a draining cloth. The whey had separated nicely, and I only drained for about 2 hours, winding up the ball periodically to help accelerate the process. I then put it into a sterile bowl, and salted it with 1T of salt, and returned it to the draining cloth, where it hangs as I write, expelling some more whey. I don't want it much firmer than it is, but some. This is to be a spreadable.
The flavor at this time is wonderful. Rich, and creamy with a nice tang. I think I'm in love with Flora Danica ;-). The temptation is just to use it at this stage, and I'll probably do just that with half of it.
The remaining half will go into a screw top Rubbermaid container, and I'll lower it down into Eddie (my dug well cheese cave)........ well above the water line of course. I intend to let it hang there in the 50's for about 2 weeks to see if I can induce the Propionic Shermani to do it's thing.
I can still taste this stuff and the temptation to open it up and steal another taste is strong. It's absolutely delightful. So good you really don't want to spread it on anything, just eat it by the spoonful....... ;-)
It's going to be hard to wait a couple of weeks.... or more to see what the Shermani does.......... As it's a soft spreadable, there really is no reason I can't monitor flavor development..... A sophisticated term for snitching a bit now and then ;-)
************ There is no reason why we have to follow recipes in making cheese. As with making beer, we can do what we want in pursuit of the cheese that satisfies us. I have a bit more of a tendency to do this than some, as is reflected in my many experiments while brewing beer. In the end I gave up brewing, and drinking (mostly), for health reasons. We unfortunately do not have nearly as many ingredients to play with in cheese making as we do in brewing............ or at least it seems that way. We live in a world filled with microbes, we have a vast array of grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables, eggs, etc, and these things and products made from them have potential application in cheeses. We have rennet processes, simple bacterial processes that don't use rennet, cooked / acid processes, Paneer, Ricotta, Mascarpone, etc. We have 3 well known mold cultures, and an array of established bacterial cultures. We can make cooked curd cheeses, cheeses that utilize the albumin in the milk....even in eggs. We can incorporate hints of bourbon, brandy, wine, etc into cheese, or cut up used wine or bourbon barrels to make aging boxes, age cheese wrapped in various leaves, wild herbs, mint, juniper, you name it........... We could create an aromatic environment that was non-contact, to age cheese in....... a rack in a box of aromatic wood, or container of aromatic herbs with a rack. Imagine for example putting lilac blossoms.... or whatever appeals to you in a box with your cheese on a rack so the heavily scented air circulates around the cheese. The reality is that there are no rules we are bound to. In brewing people broke away from convention and developed BIAB, and I experimented extensively with extremely short mash times, and different techniques for infusing hop flavors from before the boil all the way to at the tap.
Who puts the rennet, and the culture into cold milk and lets it warm slowly? I do. Who incorporates the whey ricotta into the cheese? I do (sometimes). Who adds a quarter stick of butter to the pot when making ricotta, or adds live culture back to ricotta to let it develop flavor? I do.
What do you do that isn't conventional? I don't know about you, but I get bored following recipes. Someone developed those recipes, and they DIDN'T follow someone else's recipe.
H.W.
Yesterday I decided to experiment. I love the creamy character Flora Danica gives to cheeses, as well as the peppery flavors that Propionic Shermani produces. I innoculated a gallon of cold pasteurized whole milk with a sprinkle each of these two cultures, some calcium chloride, and a normal amount of rennet, covered it and let it sit on a seedling mat, as it was cold yesterday. This was an ordinary seedling mat, not my high powered heating mat. I allowed it to sit for 20 hours, during which time I did cut the curd after about 4 hours. I then poured the works into a draining cloth. The whey had separated nicely, and I only drained for about 2 hours, winding up the ball periodically to help accelerate the process. I then put it into a sterile bowl, and salted it with 1T of salt, and returned it to the draining cloth, where it hangs as I write, expelling some more whey. I don't want it much firmer than it is, but some. This is to be a spreadable.
The flavor at this time is wonderful. Rich, and creamy with a nice tang. I think I'm in love with Flora Danica ;-). The temptation is just to use it at this stage, and I'll probably do just that with half of it.
The remaining half will go into a screw top Rubbermaid container, and I'll lower it down into Eddie (my dug well cheese cave)........ well above the water line of course. I intend to let it hang there in the 50's for about 2 weeks to see if I can induce the Propionic Shermani to do it's thing.
I can still taste this stuff and the temptation to open it up and steal another taste is strong. It's absolutely delightful. So good you really don't want to spread it on anything, just eat it by the spoonful....... ;-)
It's going to be hard to wait a couple of weeks.... or more to see what the Shermani does.......... As it's a soft spreadable, there really is no reason I can't monitor flavor development..... A sophisticated term for snitching a bit now and then ;-)
************ There is no reason why we have to follow recipes in making cheese. As with making beer, we can do what we want in pursuit of the cheese that satisfies us. I have a bit more of a tendency to do this than some, as is reflected in my many experiments while brewing beer. In the end I gave up brewing, and drinking (mostly), for health reasons. We unfortunately do not have nearly as many ingredients to play with in cheese making as we do in brewing............ or at least it seems that way. We live in a world filled with microbes, we have a vast array of grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables, eggs, etc, and these things and products made from them have potential application in cheeses. We have rennet processes, simple bacterial processes that don't use rennet, cooked / acid processes, Paneer, Ricotta, Mascarpone, etc. We have 3 well known mold cultures, and an array of established bacterial cultures. We can make cooked curd cheeses, cheeses that utilize the albumin in the milk....even in eggs. We can incorporate hints of bourbon, brandy, wine, etc into cheese, or cut up used wine or bourbon barrels to make aging boxes, age cheese wrapped in various leaves, wild herbs, mint, juniper, you name it........... We could create an aromatic environment that was non-contact, to age cheese in....... a rack in a box of aromatic wood, or container of aromatic herbs with a rack. Imagine for example putting lilac blossoms.... or whatever appeals to you in a box with your cheese on a rack so the heavily scented air circulates around the cheese. The reality is that there are no rules we are bound to. In brewing people broke away from convention and developed BIAB, and I experimented extensively with extremely short mash times, and different techniques for infusing hop flavors from before the boil all the way to at the tap.
Who puts the rennet, and the culture into cold milk and lets it warm slowly? I do. Who incorporates the whey ricotta into the cheese? I do (sometimes). Who adds a quarter stick of butter to the pot when making ricotta, or adds live culture back to ricotta to let it develop flavor? I do.
What do you do that isn't conventional? I don't know about you, but I get bored following recipes. Someone developed those recipes, and they DIDN'T follow someone else's recipe.
H.W.
